


Even Through Stone

by goodnicepeople



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Found Family, Gen, Languages, Pre and Post Canon, a portrait of magnus throughout his life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 01:39:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10232816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnicepeople/pseuds/goodnicepeople
Summary: Magnus learns Elvish as a young man and it follows him throughout his life.





	

**FIRST**

_To the sun, to the sun  
_ _Vines and flowers, reach up to the sun._

Her voice wavers as she bounces the small child on her knee. Delighted yaps and burbles, a head of flaxen hair, like spun gold. These lyrics clearly not in Common, with the lilt and curl of what Magnus thinks must be Elvish. The woman’s voice round and a little foggy, like an opal, or something soft and precious. Magnus doesn’t know what his mother’s voice sounded like. If she sang to him at all. And now, too, his father gone, but his voice he remembers well. Stand straight, Magnus. Don’t bite your fingers. When the merchants make eye contact, just nod. You don’t have to say so much. Give so much of yourself away.

He watches the child open and close their fist around nothing, fixated on something in the middle distance. His mother’s arms closing around his middle, kissing and still singing against the dome of his pale, tiny head. _What do those words mean_ , Magnus wants to lean over and ask. _What do those pretty words mean?_ Not everything is an invitation, Magnus. Lower your voice. Don’t ask so many questions. Don’t bite your fingers. Don’t run ahead. Stand straight and think.

“How much for the ermine?”

 _Even through stone,_  
_They find the cracks._  
_Ivy, reaches up.  
To the sun, to the sun._

“Kid. Boy! How much for the ermine?”

A hand slaps down hard against the table of the wooden stall. Magnus turns his head, slowly, heavily. As if through water. His jaw cracks as he opens his mouth to speak.

“Five gold,” Magnus answers, in Common. “Two for nine.”

The man makes a quiet noise of consideration in the back of his throat before walking away. Magnus’ stomach makes a whine like a sick dog, which he belatedly only realizes he can hear because the song has stopped. Those words like curling smoke lifting out of a fireplace. What do those words mean, he thinks, hard, at the back of the elven woman’s retreating form. The child over her shoulder with a curious squint, finger raised to the sun.

 

**AND THEN**

Her face is dappled by the sun through the lattice, the intricately carved details along the frets and beams of the gazebo. Fine work. He’d done his finest work. He could tell, by the way she squeezed his hand as they approached. Day after day, rushing out to the field after a long, hard day’s work, filled with an inextinguishable energy. Working on it. For her. For this moment. For the look on her face as she approaches it, noting its smallest details. The way Julia always did: so keen, seeking everything. Knowing Magnus’ work as well as she knows Magnus, the way she likes his hands, the way she thinks he’s _good_ , how she kisses his palms and assures him he has done well, he has done what was hard but fair, and forgives him for the lives they lost in the crossfire. In their kicking-and-screaming bid at freedom. The justice they’d won.

He sees her note the sculpted sunflower in various states of bloom around the circumference. A small sunflower, now, tucked behind her ear. The first time he saw her, he’d been struck by the immense and profoundly _certain_ thought that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. More beautiful even now, perhaps, in a white dress with the light so gold and soft across her freckled skin.

“Julia,” he says, her name like a secret word uncovered in a precious tome. She looks back at him encouragingly. “I want to say something.”

Brilliant Julia. The first to snatch up new books that passed through the blockade. Julia with all the right questions. _What can I give you, if you’ll teach me?_ The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes as she squinted at a book by the embers of a dying fire, too engrossed to get up and stoke the flame. Her gentle hand curled around his, correcting Magnus’ childish handwriting. Teasing but never cruel. Doesn’t it feel good? What does, Jules? To _know_ things. Yeah, Jules, yeah, I guess.

_“When I hear your name, the world turns yellow and the sky glows.”_

It is clumsy, in his voice. Elvish words always feel like they’re too big for his mouth. Round and smooth and hollowed-out against his tongue. But Julia’s eyes light up and they’re sunflowers, too, a stupid thought Magnus could say and Julia wouldn’t even tell him he was stupid to say it.

“How - ” she begins, as a laugh bubbles out of her. “When did you learn Elvish?”

“Shh, shh,” Magnus says, having to avert his eyes. If he stares back any longer he’ll have to kiss her, kiss her beautiful soft laughing mouth, the gorgeous round sunflower of her face. “I - I studied it. I’m not good. I’ll forget the words, don’t distract me.”

She nods, biting down on her lower lip. Delighted and genuinely surprised.

_“All I want is to hold your hands, soft as p - p - petals.”_

She springs forward and kisses the words off his lips, long before the minister invites the newlyweds to kiss. But that’s how Julia was, sometimes. Rushing in. Wanting to be the first there. To know it, to _see_ it. To enjoy a bright and hard-won future.

 

**LATER**

As he returns with dry kindling, stepping out of the woods, he catches Taako still awake by the warm orange glow of the campfire. Two fingers pressing gingerly into his side, dragging up the length of his ribcage. A well-concealed wince, tension held high in his bunched-up shoulders.

 _“You know, I can ask him to heal that for you,”_ Magnus says, cocking his head in Merle’s direction where he lay on his back, sucking at a pipe. _“It’s been a long enough rest.”_

Taako startles and swings to look at Magnus with the sort of ferocious glare that could bore a hole through copper.

“ _You speak Elvish_ ,” Taako says, less a question than an accusation.

“ _Yes_ ,” Magnus replies, in his best accent. He hopes Taako likes him. A foolish thought that spikes him suddenly but insistently, which he tries to tamp down. Not everyone needs to be your comrade. Sometimes you can just accept a job. Take the money and help some dwarf’s cousin and move along. Still. Still. He hopes Taako likes him. With the jangling wrists and the charmingly crooked teeth.

“ _You didn’t tell me._ ”

Magnus shrugs good-naturedly. _“Surprise.”_

“Creep,” Taako spits, in Common, turning back to the fire.

“You two badmouthin’ me over there when I can’t understand your gobblydegook?” Merle grumbles. Magnus stays locked on the side of Taako’s face, perplexed and winded by the recent turn of events. Waiting for his mouth to twist up into a smile, or for that lilting voice - sort of silly, but intriguingly so - to crack some sort of riposte. _Lighten up, ya big brute. Take a fucking joke._

Taako does not look up. Fixates straight ahead on the quiet crackle and hiss of wood slowly being overcome by flame. Magnus feels a little hollow and a little perverse somehow, the feeling following him as he settles as far away from Taako and Merle as possible with his bedroll. Sometimes it is just a job, and tomorrow the sun will rise and paint the trees with a sunflower sheen, and Magnus will do what’s expected of him.

There’s an Elvish word that means something adjacent to lonely, or hollow. Something self-inflicted. Removing yourself from a herd. A chosen separation, whether from illness or some sort of public shame. The word evades Magnus and he supposes there’s little point in excavating it, anyway. He packs it away, like he packs so much away. Resists unearthing those words like long-lost treasures. Round and cool in his mouth like stones, soft like fog, weighty like a wedding vow.

 

**BEFORE THEN**

She has thick dark hair, and that’s what makes Magnus’ throat go a bit dry. How nice he thinks it might feel to dig his fingers in there. How he wonders if it’d smell like almonds or if that was just --

She takes an order, leaning on her elbows across the bar top. Her arms the color of the rich wood beneath. That dark, dark hair caught over the tip of a long, pointed ear. Another elf cracking wise as she takes his order. Palming a generous tip across the stretch of the counter. Their voices low and musical, a little like a wave cresting and then rolling in.

She turns to Magnus, physically exhausted and suddenly - but not wholly unpleasantly - a little queasy, sat at the end of the bar. Cradling a sore elbow in one palm, a little embarrassed of the bruise blooming beneath his left eye. A simple caravan escort job gone south; under-armed for what laid ahead, but Magnus reckless and successful all the same. But it’s all like that, nowadays. Jobs, and jobs, and jobs and no home to return to, no faces who crack wide open, happy to see him. So many people and none Magnus can pin any sort of loyalty to.

“And for you?” the woman asks, having moved much closer surprisingly quickly, and Magnus notes that she is very tall.

_“Ale, please. When you can.”_

“Aye,” she affirms, and then with a tiny smile, like a softly opening flower, “ _didn’t expect to hear Elvish out of your mouth._ ”

“Oh,” Magnus says, and his face feels hot like he’s been drinking, though he’s sober as a stone. “It was - you were just speaking it, and I sort of - ”

“No, no, I love the way humans sound when they speak Elvish,” she assuages, turning away but returning with a flagon that she slides so far across the bar, it almost rests against Magnus’ sternum. She looks up, her face close. And, in a lilt that sounds almost like a purr, those curling Elvish words pouring out of her like smoke, _“Your tongue is very sweet on it.”_

Magnus stumbles backwards off his barstool, barely registering the stricken expression that flashes across the woman’s face.

“S - sorry,” Magnus stammers, digging through his pockets for coins and leaving an unchecked amount on the table, whatever weighs heavy enough in his palm. Probably far much more than the cost of an ale. “I. No. I’m not - I - ”

She flicks her eyes down towards his chest, where Magnus belatedly realizes he has his hand splayed wide. Pressed against his pounding heart. His wedding ring still - always, always - snug on his left hand.

“Ah,” she notes, cooly. “A wife.”

Magnus nods, because it’s true, even if it isn’t _true_ , and he thinks, that’s what you get, that’s what you get. Exactly the hurt you deserve. Staring at the ceiling of his rented room. Feeling something like embarrassment and guilt and a self-loathing that goes inward, deep, like a javelin.

The next day he sees a flyer that heralds, “the last job you’ll ever need to take.” The overly grave, self-important phrasing makes Magnus want to laugh. The promised finality of it, when he knows things rarely wrap up so easily. It will either go phenomenally, riches-rewardingly well. Or….

The last job you'll ever need to take.  
  
He certainly wouldn't complain, if that were true.

 

**BUT STILL**

Magnus stumbles backwards, as he steps up into the cannonball that will take him back to their moon base, away from this dry desert, from the clay that’s caked under his fingernails, the fine red silt in his hair. From this place that feels intensely, queasily familiar, exhausted from being chased by golems and worms and time. Time, and time, and time. All of it crashed into him like a steam train. He foot slips from its hold as he enters, and there’s a hand planted at his back. Right in the center, over his spine. Long, spindly fingers with sharp nails pushing him upright. Not hard, but insistent. Constant. Enough.

“Watch it, bucko. Tryin’ to flatten me?”

“Sorry. Shit.” Magnus huffs, strangely shaken by it. By the stomach-drop sensation of losing footing, like the earth cracking and buckling underneath them as a terrifying heat lapped at their ankles. “Sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it, kemosabe, just don’t do it again,” Taako chortles. His hand remains. This, Magnus notes, is strange. Strange in the way that Taako is always strange. Close, and then very, very far away. Cruel and selfless and enigmatic and making perfect sense, in turn. When he wants. Always when and how he wants.

“ _I’ve got you_ ,” he says, quieter, in Elvish. The words like crackling embers off a campsite fire. A bit like it’s a very, very good secret he’s been dying to spill. And they won’t talk about this. Any of this. About Refuge. About how Taako plays dumb but is remarkably keen, noticing everything but rejecting most. That Taako knows Magnus wears a wedding ring - always, always - snug on his left hand, but never seems to return home or speak about anyone they don’t mutually know. How Magnus returns that locked-box silence, because he knows too well the security it brings.

“I have - uh,” Merle begins, as they ascend towards the moon. “Shit. I had a flask on me. Must’ve -- shit!”

“I have some whisky in my room,” Magnus says. “Strong stuff.”

“Strong stuff,” Taako repeats, looking out the window. He laughs, which Magnus sees more than hears; breath blossoming white against the glass. “Good. That’s what we all need.”

And they sit on the floor of Magnus’ room and share it in companionable silence. Without words or language. Merle’s cheeks go ruddy and red. Taako rubs his bleary eyes with the back of his hand.

 

**LONG BEFORE, HALF REMEMBERED**

Elvish has a way of sounding pointed like daggers, which is the last clear thought Magnus has before he hits the ground, hard. A sharp, heeled boot pressed down against his sternum. His mouth tastes like metal, his neck throbs at the juncture where his spine meets his skull. Poison, he thinks. A dart, or knife, maybe. But the word fizzles out and the alleyway behind the Neverwinter inn goes dark, dark, very dark.

Magnus sometimes speaks loudly about his latest jobs, over ale. Hoping for conversation. Not everything is an invitation, Magnus. Lower your voice. Don’t ask so many questions. But it’s lonely. Lonely. And he’s so far from a home that no longer exists. So he talks loudly about goblins and caravans and gold, and hopes for some reciprocation.

When he comes to, the only possession he has left on him is his wedding ring. Always, always, snug on his left hand. His hand recently broken in battle on his last hired job, the fingers swollen. So swollen no thief could slip it over his knuckle.

 

**AT LAST**

Magnus sometimes feels guilty admitting that he is happy. When others aren’t. When others didn’t fare the same after all of the -

After all. All of it.

Sometimes he closes his eyes when his house goes dark and quiet and he thinks hard about Julia kissing his palm, the pads of his calloused fingers and saying, you did what we needed. What we asked of you. What others could not.

He bites his fingers, like when he was young. He’s nervous now, even in the peace and quiet. Maybe more nervous than before all of this began. But still. Still. He is happy. Keeps his nails unbitten and hands busy whittling at a kitchen table of his own creation, in a house entirely of his own. Simpler than anything he built for his customers. For Julia. When he knew her rapt attention would rake, appreciatively, over every tiny detail. But it’s a good house, sturdy even when the wind howls through the chimney, and it’s warm.

And not often lonely.

Magnus sings under his breath while he whittles. Taako likes that, though he doesn’t say. But he likes it, when he comes over. To read books draped across Magnus’s couches under his favorite blanket (something else he would not say, though he always ends up curled up around the thick orange one with the scalloped hem). To cluck his tongue reproachfully at the ingredients in Magnus’ cabinet but cook something wonderful all the same. Magnus’ brain wanders far back, to a far-away home.

 _Even through stone,_  
_They find the cracks._  
_Ivy, reaches up.  
To the sun, to the sun._

Taako turns over his shoulder, away from the stovetop, and Magnus watches something almost violent flash across his face. Taako is a practiced liar but a terrible sneak when caught off guard, and Magnus watches a sickly, barbed expression twists his mouth up, settling eventually into something more impassive.

“Where’d you learn that song,” he asks, as whatever soured him settles within him like calm waters. Private and inward.

Magnus puts down the carving taking shape in his hands. A ruffled looking, squat little barn owl. He thinks he might gift it to Merle, if Merle didn’t notoriously, consistently lose things like this.

“Sorry?” Magnus asks.

“That song,” Taako says, “It’s old. Very old.”

“Yeah,” Magnus answers, with a wan smile. He rubs some bleariness out of his eyes, adjusting from squinting at such small, fine details for so long. Taako framed by the kitchen window, backlit and almost glowing, but his brow obscured by shadow. Veiled, somehow. Something about it casting him seemingly miles away.

“It’s, uh, I remember it from when I was a kid. I liked it, long before I knew the words.”

“It’s nice, I guess,” Taako concedes, though not with the same warmth.

“Remind you of home?”

“Nah,” Taako answers. And turns back to his cooking. A long moment passes, one which Magnus knows better than to pry into. Taako is a bit like that; prideful in his reticence. A tangled knot that only becomes more impossible to pick apart the more its worked at. He likes that about him, now. His jangling wrists and his bright smile that cracks open to reveal those appealingly crooked teeth and the good feeling, the bone-deep accomplishment, of seeing him laugh. Loud, and clattering, and earned.

“And I learned it a little different,” he says, eventually. Turning back to face Magnus, his face now caught, alight,  with a swath of sunlight. “Better, I think.”

“Better?”

“The part about the ivy. You said, _even through stone, they find the cracks._ It’s they _make_ the cracks, bubbeleh.” A muted, but triumphant little smile. Slow, but blooming up the side of his face like the serpentine grain in fine wood. “Tell me that innit better.”

“Yeah, I like that,” Magnus concedes genuinely. Happy because Taako is happy. Because everything still feels a bit like a celebration after so much hardship. Because they’re alive, and there is sun through windows and hot food to be eaten and things to say. Words that evade his clumsy grasp, slippery and feckless, sometimes slotting so neatly into place.

Taako raises one musically-accented bangled arm and makes a fist. “ _Voronwië_ ,” he says, as he does so. “Perseverance.”

And it’s hard not to notice with Taako’s arm in the air between them, colorfully manicured and dotted with old burns, that it is also recently laid bare. _Freed_ , is the word that occurs to him, with a brief flash of guilt. From a heavy bracer that foretold inhuman struggle.

“But I ain’t human,” he imagines Taako would say if he could read his mind, which he does seems to do. Uncannily at times. Like now, as he settles into the chair opposite and lays his palm over the bare stretch of Magnus’ right forearm. “Elves are made of stronger stuff than _that_.”

Something on the stovetop splatters and hisses, causing Taako to jerk around, hissing some jagged-sounding, short word in Elvish that Magnus hasn’t ever heard before. Taako leaps up to attend to a now-mess wreathed in steam.

“Come again?” Magnus presses mischievously, his voice pitching high on the crest of a barely-restrained laugh as watches Taako briefly fumble with a pot holder. “Don’t think I know that one.”

“I’ll teach you when you’re older, hombre,” Taako answers, before repeating that same curse, louder, crackling and dissipating into a laugh.

That song does remind Magnus of home, he supposes. This home. One he made with his own hands and filled with people who’ll stay of their own volition.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Panda/Bramblepelt](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Bramblepelt) who read this and assured me it wasn't stupid. They may be lying, but it's still very nice.


End file.
